The accelerated collision between the digital world and physical spaces is the subject of buzzed-about Beijing artist Lin Ke’s first Shanghai solo exhibition at BANK. Utilizing the laptop as an art studio and gallery with limitless possibilities, Like Me spans digitally altered works to ones capturing the mundane real-time actions towards artistic creation in the computer age.
“I don’t have a real studio, so I use my computer [instead],” he explains. “I can treat it like a space to store my works or to imagine all the possibilities of how they will be presented.”
In a series of digital works, Lin has downloaded gallery installation photos that he utilizes as larger than life desktop images that are blown-up and displayed.
In others, he is an active participant, simultaneously as performer and creator.
“Sometimes I use the laptop camera that I control from a distance with a touchpad and record my movements to music, so there is that interaction as well,” he explains.
“It’s really personifying the point of view of this machine looking at us looking at them,” adds the show's curator and BANK owner Mathieu Borysevicz. “That interaction is profound even though he’s just playing. That’s where we are today.”
In the titular video work, Lin explicitly lays out commentary on the modern era by using an unexpected source.
“I really love Star Trek and there was a speech that felt really prophetic about how we are living now in the digital era,” he explains.
“The day before, I was listening to Korean rap and was inspired to create my own rap with that dialogue by using music I found from Soundcloud.”
That playfulness can be found in his artistic attitude, where he bashfully notes, “Everything I do is for fun and to make everyone feel happy. It’s really not very ambitious.”
Borysevicz can only chuckle about Lin’s assessment of himself. “Sometimes I describe his work as it’s so dumb, it’s good,” he smiles before describing a piece as “he just has his hand on a button.”
“But this is the life that we’re leading now,” Borysevicz adds. “There’s a lot of dry humor to his self portraits and this richness when you think about how each of us are spending eight hours a day on our devices. That dimension and its relationship to reality, and how those two are flattening slowly. He’s really articulated in an interesting way even if he kind of came on this space accidentally.”
The show is the second exhibition at BANK’s new space on Anfu Lu. While its original location in a historic building on the dark side of the Bund instantly lent the gallery edgy credibility, Borysevicz is happy with the new digs.
“We saw this space and like 200 others in every pocket of this city,” he says. “The old space had a very specific history but the problem with them is that we could only sign short term leases.”
“We didn’t need to be in this posh neighborhood, but we needed to be secure. When we actually came in, there were piles of rubble, as the space hadn’t been used in seven or eight years. By leaving some of what was here before uncovered and being somewhat underground in this bougie neighborhood, it’s a gesture on its own to our character.”
Until Feb 20. BANK, Bldg 2, B/F, Lane 298 Anfu Lu, by Wulumuqi Lu 安福路298号, 近乌鲁木齐路 (6301 3622, info@mabsociety.com)
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